a taxonomic guide for reference
having done some heavy sociolinguistic work over the past several years to catalog & highlight this material, it strikes me as a wise moment to share. i am a kind, generous & giving man; i do not wish for you to have to do the work to figure these references out yourself.
i wish to state, for reference, that i suffered to obtain these data. i have been forced to spend entire weeks with mitchell's family. i love mitchell's family. (sometimes i suspect i may love mitchell's family more than mitchell loves mitchell's family.) but if you knew what i knew, you would agree with me that they are best experienced in small doses. (there are, as a rule, more people at one of their "small" get-togethers than there were humans in a hundred-mile radius of where i was born.)
(also, if any of mitchell's family is reading this: i don't mean you, kids, i mean the rest of them.)
honey: she only vaguely knows you, but she likes you well enough. (this tends to be her default option, most of the time.)
sweetie: you have somehow managed to wake up her maternal instincts again. this is either a good or a bad thing, depending on whether or not you have a high tolerance for being fussed over.
sugar: she's looking at you right now and thinking that you'd probably look better with a nice dirt covering. as in, six feet under. you might want to suddenly remember an urgent appointment elsewhere. perhaps on another continent.
babe: she's probably drunk again.
baby: you probably won't hear this one unless she's sleeping with you, so we can safely take it off the table.
darling: she is temporarily annoyed with you. it will pass. you had better hope.
as for compounding names -- e.g. 'babydoll', 'honeybaby', 'baby darling', 'sweetie pie', 'sugarbear', 'angelbaby', &c -- i am still in the process of assembling the complete morphological & semantic web of use. but for the purposes of interacting with her, that should suffice as a guide.
(why, yes, this is my revenge for that day and a half of nonstop gloating, why do you ask?)
i wish to state, for reference, that i suffered to obtain these data. i have been forced to spend entire weeks with mitchell's family. i love mitchell's family. (sometimes i suspect i may love mitchell's family more than mitchell loves mitchell's family.) but if you knew what i knew, you would agree with me that they are best experienced in small doses. (there are, as a rule, more people at one of their "small" get-togethers than there were humans in a hundred-mile radius of where i was born.)
(also, if any of mitchell's family is reading this: i don't mean you, kids, i mean the rest of them.)
honey: she only vaguely knows you, but she likes you well enough. (this tends to be her default option, most of the time.)
sweetie: you have somehow managed to wake up her maternal instincts again. this is either a good or a bad thing, depending on whether or not you have a high tolerance for being fussed over.
sugar: she's looking at you right now and thinking that you'd probably look better with a nice dirt covering. as in, six feet under. you might want to suddenly remember an urgent appointment elsewhere. perhaps on another continent.
babe: she's probably drunk again.
baby: you probably won't hear this one unless she's sleeping with you, so we can safely take it off the table.
darling: she is temporarily annoyed with you. it will pass. you had better hope.
as for compounding names -- e.g. 'babydoll', 'honeybaby', 'baby darling', 'sweetie pie', 'sugarbear', 'angelbaby', &c -- i am still in the process of assembling the complete morphological & semantic web of use. but for the purposes of interacting with her, that should suffice as a guide.
(why, yes, this is my revenge for that day and a half of nonstop gloating, why do you ask?)